Strong product trade increase

Published:

22 June 2007 01:30

Updated:

28 November 2012 03:14

BP's presentation of its 56th Statistical Review of World Energy did not reveal any big surprises and has already provoked widespread comment. BP is keen to promote the view that there are enough hydrocarbons around for the foreseeable future. BP's figure for world proven oil reserves was also about the same as in 2005.

The last five-year period has been quite exceptional both with regard to economic growth and increased energy consumption despite strongly increasing energy prices. Among the major energy sources, it is the consumption of coal that has increased the most, which explains in part the accelerated increase in CO2 emissions.

The last eight Reviews show the trends in trade development for crude oil and oil products.

Oil product trade/export and import – milliontonnes: Source BP

Year

Products

Products increase

Crude

Crude increase

1999

447.6

1578.1

2000

450.2

0.6%

1660.7

5.2%

2001

475.3

5.6%

1684.0

1.4%

2002

485.9

2.2%

1666.7

-1.0%

2003

490.5

0.9%

1770.0

6.2%

2004

525.8

7.2%

1854.9

4.8%

2005

576.3

9.6%

1885.2

1.6%

2006

657.8

14.1%

1932.6

2.5%

Looking at oil product exports and imports, there has been an accelerating growth from 0.9% in 2003 to 14.1% in 2006. The crude trade development, however, does not show any clear trend. The trade increase peaked in 2003 at 6.2% and was 2.5% in 2006.

There has been a strong focus on the tight refinery capacity. While there is sufficient distillation capacity, there is also a lack of upgrading capacity. BP estimates that the capacity situation will improve as from 2009. The countries that have expanded refinery capacity the most in 2006 are India (+17% to 2,992 mbd), China (+6.7% to 7,029 mbd) and Indonesia (+6.6% to 1,126 mbd), while total world refinery capacity increased by 1.5% to 87.2 mbd. World oil consumption in 2006 increased by 0.7% over 2005, the same as refinery throughputs.